“Jesus can and has and will do all this and more” by Bobby Jamieson

“Ecclesiastes is a quest that does not bring back all the quester hoped to find.

Ecclesiastes is a question. Its pages do not return a full answer; many loose threads dangle.

Qohelet, like a stand-up comic, squinted to bring truths into surprising focus, but what is the whole truth that he not only did not know but could not know?

The philosopher at the party seems full of socially insensitive bad news.

Sure, when you sit with him long enough, you hear some surprisingly good news too.

But is Qohelet’s good news the best we can hear?

Qohelet the photographer captured and chronicled all that he saw, and he claimed to see it all.

But has anything entered the picture since?

One reason for Qohelet’s uncommon common sense is that he is painfully and persistently aware of his and everyone’s limits.

No one can tell the future.

No one can guarantee success or secure gain.

No one can turn away death at their door.

There is nothing new under the sun. To use the hackneyed current vocabulary, these are Qohelet’s priors.

Grant these premises—which are hard to deny—and Qohelet’s conclusions follow with grim necessity.

These premises draw the lines that have confined every human since Adam and Eve took their fatal bites.

Except one. Jesus of Nazareth is a human being.

He is also, mysteriously, much more than a human being.

He is not only a human being but the God who is the judge of humanity.

He is not only a creature; he is also the creator who gives everyone every good gift they ever get.

If you had met him in Judea two thousand years ago, what you would have seen was obviously and unimpressively human, but the one you were meeting is also the sole agent responsible for the existence of all things.

As a man, he was subject to the natural limits of humanity, including, in our post-fall condition, mortality.

As God the Son, he is subject to no limit, not confined by any finitude.

Instead, he is himself full, free, unhindered, and unthreatenable life.

Is there anything new under the sun?

Can any human being turn death away at their door?

Can anyone secure gain or guarantee success?

Who can tell the future?

Jesus can and has and will do all this and more.”

–Bobby Jamieson, Everything Is Never Enough: Ecclesiastes’ Surprising Path to Resilient Happiness (New York: WaterBrook, 2025), 205-206.